"Meaningless! Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless."
What does man gain from all his labour at which he toils under the sun?
Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever.

Friday, July 23, 2004

Time flies by.

Well it's been a bit since I last posted here fair bit's been going on with uni starting up again. Unfortunately looks like I'll have to do some work this term as I'm taking a lab paper "Biochemical Techniques". Which means lots of lab reports and assignments. It should be an interesting paper though with two especially interesting bits, The Murder Mystery and the Projects.
The Murder Mystery is a non assessed assignment/project thingy, where we attempt to solve a fictional Murder produced by one of our Lecturers.

Here's a brief out line of it.

The deceased was a 20 year old Female flatting with one of her best friends (Female) who is also her ex lover. She was having an affair with her flatmates father a 40+ year old geneticist who's primary area of research is Bioterrorism and is currently married to his second wife a Microbiologist also researching bioterrorism.
The deceased had recently thought she might be pregnant and had mentioned it to her lover.
The deceased was a test tube baby which she new, but cloned by her current lover 20 years ago, from DNA that was claimed to have come from a finger bone of Helen of Troy.
The deceased had been taking Gossiupy an anti nausea Medicine provided by her flatmate (ex lover) who had gotten it from her step mother (her fathers second wife.)
The flatmates mother (the first wife) had died ~20 years previously of the flu at the age of ~30 and had left her considerable fortune to her husband.

And that's just the basic out line.

The second part of the course which will begin in the second term is a 7 week research project into one of the topics provided by various members of the Biochemistry department. The topics I've expressed an interest in doing are.

Switching enzymes on and off: are tyrosine phosphatase's present in plants and fungiWhich will test for the presence of tyrosine kinases (a type of enzyme) in a number of plant and fungal species. Making use of such techniques as ELISA, Western blotting, antibodies for molecular species detection, coupled enzyme assays and the genomics database.

How do parasites invade host cells? - Turgor pressure in a parasitic plant.Which will involve examining turgor pressure in Cuscuta cells and the effect of hormones on the turgor pressure.

Detecting toxic metals in the environment: fungal growth patterns could provide a new toolWhich involves the use of fractal geometry to examine the shape of colonies of Microbes growing on various agar plates contaminated with toxic metals.

Enzymes of nitrogen nutrition in Old man's beardWhich is studying NO3 assimilation via the NR protein in Old man's beard. Via hydroponic growth of plants, enzyme extraction and assays and quantifying enzyme concs using antibodies.

Hopefully I'll get the first one as it appears to be the most interesting of the ones I choose.

Quick note times I'm most likely to be found hanging round uni with noting to do are.
Monday 1pm.
Tuesday 10-12 and 1pm.
Wednesday @ CU.
Friday 12-1.
Rest of the time I'm usually at home or in lectures or Labs.